It must suck having to go out in the back yard and cut down a tree, make a fire with a flint (that you dug up yourself). Then smithing your own pot to heat the water, just to bath in the morning.
If we just ban the food, all the rest will just work themselves out. We all know that eating food leads to music, bible and porn related injuries. I don't have detailed figures on this, but I bet that over 99% of all porn/music/bible related injuries happen within 24 hours of food use.
I don't think that word means what you think it means. You see, as detrimental as it might be to that minimum wage employee, they can stand up and say "I quit". That is a very different thing than slavery. A slave is compelled by law and force to work for thier master. I have yet to even hear of a single case where bounty hunters were hired to drag a McDonalds employee back to the kitchen and whipped them into submission until they started making burgers again.
By trying to redefine the word "slave" and "own" you show that you don't really believe what you say.
As for my motives and manner of speaking...Yes, I specifically cornered them. While I would consider going to a church and harrasing people to be wrong, if you come to my door and ask to speak on a subject that you have good reason to believe I disagree with, you are fair game. I find being polite while I rip apart some poor slobs world view to be perticularly effective.
Do I believe that as a rule Johova Whitnesses support slavery? No. Do I believe that Johova Witnesses REALLY believe their bibles? No. What I did was point out the contents of what they were trying to convince me of, and asked them if they truly believed it. This left them with a few choices. Shut up and leave, deny faith in their bible, or condone slavery. One chose to shut up and leave. The other chose to condone slavery.
If in x number of years we decide that current working conditions are wrong, I will admit it. I will admit that I, as well as others that tolerated McDonalds, are human and falible. The key here is that (as far as I am aware of) every single Chistian proclaims their god to be infalible. That means that anything their god does is right. Since their own doctrine says that God condoned slavery, then they are left with the delema. Is thier doctrine wrong, or is slavery ok?
Now, are you going to try and convice us that promoting a book as well as promoting that it be used to define your livestyle, that condones slavery is not in itself teaching and promoting slavery?
* An simple yet complete Access Control List. It starts at the connection to the server and works it way all the way down to the specific fields you want to give access to.
* A simply yet complete Execution Control List.
* Replication. No one does it better or easier
* Extreamly simple to set up and maintain load balancing.
* Simple clustering.
* Multiplatform. Many for the server, fewer for the client.
* Write once run anywhere development.
* The ability to have multiple people that are not currently connected to each other to work in the same database at the same time. Notes understands the difference between a 'copy' and a 'replica'. If you and I are running from the same copy with different replicas, we can make changes at different unconnected places, and it will not break the application.
* A simple API that gives access almost all aspects of the environment. Depending on where the code is going, you have the choice between 'Simple Actions' (Simple wizard), @Formula (like original 1-2-3 or excel macros), LotusScript (Basic), Java, or Javascript.
* HTML rendering inside of the client
* Runtime on the fly native application auto-conversion to HTML/Javascript. Not 100%, but it gets you 80% of the way there. This allows mixed client/browser applications.
* Secure
* No rip and replace. Notes v1 apps still run in v6.5, and I have no reason to believe they won't run in v7 to be released in January.
* A commitment to interop with standards. Many features in Notes were not standardized, or even existant when Notes was created, but as standards have emerged, Lotus has interface to them. i.e. SMTP, POP3, IMAP, LDAP, SQL, Java, XML, HTML, URLs...
* Stable.
* Simple administration. I have seen receptionists trained to be administrators in a week, and successfully perform the job. I'm not talking about shining stars that just never got the chance, but people that were topping out on skill sets as receptionists.
* The ability to keep using your HTML based applications even disconnected from the server. i.e. on an airplane.
* I could keep going on...
One of the reasons Notes has such a bad reputation is that the barier to entry is so low that companies will often assign whoever is the first person to use it as the adminstrators and developers. If you are going to just use Notes as an email server, that might be ok, but the people soon end up out of their scope when asked to develop applications that require an actual developer to do the work.
As for what I do with it, here are some of the applications I have developed:
* Multiple help desk systems
* Injury tracking
* Root Cause Analysis
* Repair assignemnt and tracking
* Various simple calendering apps link vacation tracking and such...
* Medical testing scheduling
* Time card applications
* Resource tracking
* Training compliance and tracking
* Applicant tracking
* Intern tracking
* Sales Management
* Various discussion applications
* Employee Appraisal
* Order Inquiry
* Various web based questionairs
* Photo Hosting
* Recipie book
Anything else I can't think of off the top of my head.
These were not slapped together, just make it work applications, but full end user apps that notify users (nag when it warrents) via email, escalate when necessary, and implement the various business logic that is necessary to keep data in a consistant state. Some use a browser as a client, some use Notes as the client, and many use both, determined by the task and user.
So, yes, if you work at a company that has Notes/Domino, and your only using it for email, your company is missing out on a very good application platform.
The company that I do the bulk of my work for has one employee that works with me. She was an admin type that fell into the position. She is now a very low end developer. She handles testing, form/view design, and can edit some code to fix some errors. Between her and I, we crank out 3 to 4 full end user application a year, while she also supports all existing applications that are in production.
No, Notes is a stable secure environment that allows extreamly rapid development, with very simple yet powerful administration. It's biggest problem was that while MS added eye candy to Exchange, Lotus worked on security and features.
MS was also allowed to pervert the term "Groupware" into meaning email and calandering. Back around '87 or '88 MS was out touring Exchange and promising that it would be a Notes killer, but every time they were asked if it could do tasks that was simple in Notes, the answer was "Not, yet but it's planned for the next version." Well it didn't take long before MS just gave up and started telling people that "Groupware" was email and calandering. Now you see dozens of applications that claim to be groupware. Most would have been laughed at for that claim in the '80s.
Being a Notes/Domino fan, let me tell you what IS wrong with Notes.
1) Poor control of the front end classes. It is problimatic to dynamically create objects in the client.
2) No native Linux client. They do have a native Linux server. (as well as many other OSs)
3) The JVM is built in, and is often a version behind what is in broad use.
4) Printing is a bit weak.
That's about it.
The keys to getting me to download instead of buy a CD are:
*No DRM
*Lossless format
*Some method of writing the disk so that it will be recognized by the cddb
*Cover Art (Front and Back) for a standard CD case (best if they have it for slim cases as others prefer them)
*CD Artwork
*Price that take into account that I am now the manufacturer
Anything less, and I loss by buying online. Given that online distribution should be noticably cheaper, this would allow the labels to still make their money. While they are at it, they should also have other formats directly downloadable for those that don't care about the longevity of their music.
The tone of your post is that I am saying that it still sucks. I specifically said that enough money and manpower has been thrown at it that it is finally getting good, AND that those who haven't used it for a while should reevaluate.
That being said...you make a lot of excuses for why a person cannot write once run anywhere, but the fact is, they cannot. It has gotten better, but Sun promised "Write Once, Run Anywhere". That was the first and primary promise of Java. It failed.
Now that all that money and effort has been spent improving Java, we do have a useful environment. Just not as useful as if the same effort had been put into an emulator that had a better foundation.
As for C-64 emulator trying to run at the same speed as an original C-64. In that you are mostly wrong. Given that the target audience of a C-64 emulator is people looking that real 64 experience, speed limiting is a feature, but most C-64 emulators have speed limiting as an option, not as a requirement.
"Yes, and guess how effecient this makes code execution, if the emulated CPU happens to differ a lot from the host CPU ?"
Uh, my comment was about running code accuratly, not about speed. If speed was the primary goal, then Java has been a failure right up until the last few years. The only reason Java is resonably quick now is JIT. This was being done in the "Toys" long before it was done with Java.
"C-64 emulators are toys. Java is meant for work. Now, one may argue how well it fullfills this role; but the purposes - and therefore design criterias - of the two are completely different. Therefore this comparison is entirely pointless."
That's just silly. Just because two similar products are aiming at different targets does not make a comparison pointless. Java promised emulation accuracy. They failed, while the various "Toy" emulators succeeded. The developers of Java did NOT meet their design criteria. What they did was change the stated criteria to meet the actual code. This is why making the emulator first was bad.
When Sun first introduced Java, their stated goal was to overthrow MS/Intel. Their plan was to distribut an emulator for free. When they got enough software written to run on the emulator, they could introduce the physical machines and instantly have a majority of the software market working on their hardware.
The reason this failed was three fold. 1) The emulation accuracy was not what it was promised. 2) The emulator was too slow for most applications. 3) By the time Sun was ready to start making chips, Intel's offerings were so much faster that they could emulate faster than the Java chips ran on silicon.
Bonus points to anyone that can remember what the name of Suns Java chip was.
Hint: They named something else exactly the same thing. (presumably to bury references to the chip in search engines)
It is just a really crappy emulator. The reason that you don't see multitasking in the JVM is the same reason you didn't see it in DOS. Everyone is compiling their code to run in machine language (Yes, Byte code.) The JVM is following in the footsteps of the "IBM PC". An increadably crappy design that after years of manpower, and millions of dollars is finally getting to a point where it is good. (If you haven't looked at it in a while, it's time to reevaluate)
There is no reason that an OS couldn't be written for Java, and that OS could support multi-tasking. One thing to keep in mind is that the target audience for java, and the limitations of Java don't lead to the kind of enviroment that would encourage a company to write a full OS to run on it. Besides, since the platforms that have JVMs on them can load multiple instances of the JVM, what little incentive is left disappears.
Shortly after Java was introduced, I would always laugh about the whole write once run anywhere claim. Java was a crappy emulator that was inconsistant across platforms. One program would have three different outcomes on three different platforms. At the same time you could get something like a C64 emulator that would run on 20 different platforms, and get exactly the same results every time.
I believe the biggest hurdle to Java compatibility was that they wrote the emulator first, and then tried to make the processors after. This meant that when one implementation behaved differently than the other, you could not point to the physical reference platform and say, "look, this is how it runs or real hardware." Not suprisingly the Java processors never took off
Many do understand that the original post was a joke. Unfortunaly, many of us have met many developers that are completely serios about writing unmaintainable code on purpose. While many of the posts here are obviously jokes, some are not. It is an unfortunate reality that our industry is loaded with almost as many unethical people as car dealerships. For example, I cannot count the number of times I have been in a meeting where it is openly stated that we should "never leave money on the table".
I always try to write code with a bus in mind. No, not a data bus, but a big steel diesel passanger carrying bus. The question is what happens if I get hit by a bus tomorrow. The company that I am currently contracting to, started at needing ~12 a month of work. After a few applications that even their least talented coders could make modification to, I am now at a steady 40 to 50 hours of work a week.
Another benefit of coding to for a bus is that after a couple of successes, the people you work for will soon start to just take your word for it when you tell them that you should spend more time on a piece of code because it needs to be done right.
I was the 4th or 5th contractor they had for this job, and each of the others lasted long enough for one to two applications before things started to fall apart. I am 6 years into this contract, and on application 17 or 18.
AMD is not the "Good Guys". They are the underdog. There is a big difference. The reason you should want AMD to succeed is not to have an AMD monopoly, but because when you have two titans battling it out in the corporate arena, neither can afford to stomp on their own peasants.
This has been the claim of every manufacturer since the Nintendo. I'm not buying it. We all know that it is common practice for companies to do 'creative accounting'. We know that there are plenty of ways to make it look like money is being lost when it is not in reality. What do you think would happen if MS admitted to making a 10% profit on their hardware? That's right, they would have hundreds of thousands of people screaming that they should lower the price, or stop charging for a "license" to make software for the unit. The very poor excuse for charging this "license" fee has been that that is how they make their money back from the loss on hardware. They loose even that excuse if they admit to making a profit on hardware.
It is extreamly common for people in authority to use other who have no say to deliver their messages. This is often done with the express purpose of pushing unreasonable requests on people, and creating exactly your feelings on anyone who complains. This is not just in government, but in jobs, and even in families.
How many people have had a review, that included a "wage review", at work where they are told that someone not involved in the meeting, and unaccessable to the employee, is the final decicion on their raise. This was the same thing.
So basically you are wrong. In most situations, being a jerk to the innocent guys just trying to do their job is the only way to get things changed. If your job is Henchman, expect to be treated like it.
Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to have fallen for the misconception that SSI (Social Security INSURANCE) is SSR (Social Security RETIREMENT). This is why the system is failing. SSI was never intended to be a retirement plan. When they created it, they expected most people to die before recieving it, and the few that did recieve it would be on their death beds. They chose an age for simplicity, as picking a level of health would be very hard as to how old is too old work.
Now, I understand that we have a couple of generations that have been lead to believe that SSI is SSR, and it would be unfair to someone that has budgeted to retire next year, to suddenly tell them that they have another 10 years to go. But telling someone who is (like me) 35 that they won't recieve SSI until they are 75 instead of 65 really would be ok.
The solution would be to have a schedule where every 3 or 4 years, the age of SSI payout goes up by 1 year. This could go on until SSI becomes solvent.
This would allow SSI to be restored to its original purpose without completely screwing the population that has been allowed to misunderstand it's purpose.
But since our eyes were made by an "Intelligent Designer", doesn't that mean that we have been designed to go blind? Looking directly at the sun is the Intelligent thing to do!
If AOL is serious about this, it could kill 99% of "piracy" and remove the need for DRM at the same time. While there is a certain small percentage that will copy these shows just for the entertainment value of collecting them in one place, the vast majority of people would not bother.
You have to look at why people copy video. (please add more if I missed any)
1) Cost
This is not an issue if the shows are advertisement sponsered.
2) Commercial free
At one to two minutes per show, few people will be willing to take the time edit out the commercials, or to chase down the moving target of p2p/pirate sites to get a show without 1 to 2 minutes of commercials. If the consumer doesn't need to fiddle with the video to strip DRM, they are less likely to spend the time to cut commercials.
3) Quality
If the quality is as good as standard TV, few will seek out the alternative sources.
4) Convinence
If they keep all the shows available all the time without DRM or the need for a special client, people won't need to keep local copies to know that they will be able to pick the show they want to watch with just a remote.
5) Portability
If people know they can always go back to the well for another copy, and the shows have no DRM, they won't feel the need to stockpile shows to have future access. They will fill their portable device, and delete when done to make room for new shows.
6) Hording is fun
Some people download tons of music and videos, just to horde. These people often are not even listening/watching this content. Sometimes they download more content that they could watch/listen to in their lifetimes. These people aren't actually a concern because the data is not music/video until it is decoded.
7) Alternate OS/TV Top Device
This can really only be solved by not implenting DRM or a specialize client.
8) Privacey
If the data collected is limited to volentary data and date/time/file data without personally identifiable data, few will complain.
No doubt this is a step in the right direction. If the stay away from artificial scarcity, and DRM, they will have removed almost all reasons for piracy.
Hey the odds of getting pregnent might seem impossible, but they would have said the same thing about his AIDS clearing up too....
So, now that he has been cured of AIDS, and as soon as he solves the same gender pregnancy issue, what will be next on his list???
Too bad this doesn't seem to apply to photographers. Somehow they can charge you work of taking the photograph, then charge you for the right to copy the image, then charge you for the film used to take the picture, and finally they charge you the negatives which are physically the same item as the film they already charged you for.
"work for hire" doesn't seem to always automatically apply.
By, saying that all audio CDs should not be played, you took the heat off of Sony. You basically told them that audio CDs are inherently a problem. This would lead to the belief that the problem is not Sony's. You also punished the employee. If companies follow your advice, employees that want a little music through the day will now be denied the use of any CDs. You should make sure that you highlight that SONY is the problem, and that they have software on their CDs that infect computers with DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
It must suck having to go out in the back yard and cut down a tree, make a fire with a flint (that you dug up yourself). Then smithing your own pot to heat the water, just to bath in the morning.
If we just ban the food, all the rest will just work themselves out. We all know that eating food leads to music, bible and porn related injuries. I don't have detailed figures on this, but I bet that over 99% of all porn/music/bible related injuries happen within 24 hours of food use.
I don't think that word means what you think it means. You see, as detrimental as it might be to that minimum wage employee, they can stand up and say "I quit". That is a very different thing than slavery. A slave is compelled by law and force to work for thier master. I have yet to even hear of a single case where bounty hunters were hired to drag a McDonalds employee back to the kitchen and whipped them into submission until they started making burgers again.
By trying to redefine the word "slave" and "own" you show that you don't really believe what you say.
As for my motives and manner of speaking...Yes, I specifically cornered them. While I would consider going to a church and harrasing people to be wrong, if you come to my door and ask to speak on a subject that you have good reason to believe I disagree with, you are fair game. I find being polite while I rip apart some poor slobs world view to be perticularly effective.
Do I believe that as a rule Johova Whitnesses support slavery? No. Do I believe that Johova Witnesses REALLY believe their bibles? No. What I did was point out the contents of what they were trying to convince me of, and asked them if they truly believed it. This left them with a few choices. Shut up and leave, deny faith in their bible, or condone slavery. One chose to shut up and leave. The other chose to condone slavery.
If in x number of years we decide that current working conditions are wrong, I will admit it. I will admit that I, as well as others that tolerated McDonalds, are human and falible. The key here is that (as far as I am aware of) every single Chistian proclaims their god to be infalible. That means that anything their god does is right. Since their own doctrine says that God condoned slavery, then they are left with the delema. Is thier doctrine wrong, or is slavery ok?
Now, are you going to try and convice us that promoting a book as well as promoting that it be used to define your livestyle, that condones slavery is not in itself teaching and promoting slavery?
The list is long, but here are some.
* An simple yet complete Access Control List. It starts at the connection to the server and works it way all the way down to the specific fields you want to give access to.
* A simply yet complete Execution Control List.
* Replication. No one does it better or easier
* Extreamly simple to set up and maintain load balancing.
* Simple clustering.
* Multiplatform. Many for the server, fewer for the client.
* Write once run anywhere development.
* The ability to have multiple people that are not currently connected to each other to work in the same database at the same time. Notes understands the difference between a 'copy' and a 'replica'. If you and I are running from the same copy with different replicas, we can make changes at different unconnected places, and it will not break the application.
* A simple API that gives access almost all aspects of the environment. Depending on where the code is going, you have the choice between 'Simple Actions' (Simple wizard), @Formula (like original 1-2-3 or excel macros), LotusScript (Basic), Java, or Javascript.
* HTML rendering inside of the client
* Runtime on the fly native application auto-conversion to HTML/Javascript. Not 100%, but it gets you 80% of the way there. This allows mixed client/browser applications.
* Secure
* No rip and replace. Notes v1 apps still run in v6.5, and I have no reason to believe they won't run in v7 to be released in January.
* A commitment to interop with standards. Many features in Notes were not standardized, or even existant when Notes was created, but as standards have emerged, Lotus has interface to them. i.e. SMTP, POP3, IMAP, LDAP, SQL, Java, XML, HTML, URLs...
* Stable.
* Simple administration. I have seen receptionists trained to be administrators in a week, and successfully perform the job. I'm not talking about shining stars that just never got the chance, but people that were topping out on skill sets as receptionists.
* The ability to keep using your HTML based applications even disconnected from the server. i.e. on an airplane.
* I could keep going on...
One of the reasons Notes has such a bad reputation is that the barier to entry is so low that companies will often assign whoever is the first person to use it as the adminstrators and developers. If you are going to just use Notes as an email server, that might be ok, but the people soon end up out of their scope when asked to develop applications that require an actual developer to do the work.
As for what I do with it, here are some of the applications I have developed:
* Multiple help desk systems
* Injury tracking
* Root Cause Analysis
* Repair assignemnt and tracking
* Various simple calendering apps link vacation tracking and such...
* Medical testing scheduling
* Time card applications
* Resource tracking
* Training compliance and tracking
* Applicant tracking
* Intern tracking
* Sales Management
* Various discussion applications
* Employee Appraisal
* Order Inquiry
* Various web based questionairs
* Photo Hosting
* Recipie book
Anything else I can't think of off the top of my head.
These were not slapped together, just make it work applications, but full end user apps that notify users (nag when it warrents) via email, escalate when necessary, and implement the various business logic that is necessary to keep data in a consistant state. Some use a browser as a client, some use Notes as the client, and many use both, determined by the task and user.
So, yes, if you work at a company that has Notes/Domino, and your only using it for email, your company is missing out on a very good application platform.
The company that I do the bulk of my work for has one employee that works with me. She was an admin type that fell into the position. She is now a very low end developer. She handles testing, form/view design, and can edit some code to fix some errors. Between her and I, we crank out 3 to 4 full end user application a year, while she also supports all existing applications that are in production.
Well every current owner of an XBox 360 now has a legitamate legal primary use for installing a mod chip!
No, Notes is a stable secure environment that allows extreamly rapid development, with very simple yet powerful administration. It's biggest problem was that while MS added eye candy to Exchange, Lotus worked on security and features.
MS was also allowed to pervert the term "Groupware" into meaning email and calandering. Back around '87 or '88 MS was out touring Exchange and promising that it would be a Notes killer, but every time they were asked if it could do tasks that was simple in Notes, the answer was "Not, yet but it's planned for the next version." Well it didn't take long before MS just gave up and started telling people that "Groupware" was email and calandering. Now you see dozens of applications that claim to be groupware. Most would have been laughed at for that claim in the '80s.
Being a Notes/Domino fan, let me tell you what IS wrong with Notes.
1) Poor control of the front end classes. It is problimatic to dynamically create objects in the client.
2) No native Linux client. They do have a native Linux server. (as well as many other OSs) 3) The JVM is built in, and is often a version behind what is in broad use. 4) Printing is a bit weak. That's about it.
The keys to getting me to download instead of buy a CD are: *No DRM *Lossless format *Some method of writing the disk so that it will be recognized by the cddb *Cover Art (Front and Back) for a standard CD case (best if they have it for slim cases as others prefer them) *CD Artwork *Price that take into account that I am now the manufacturer Anything less, and I loss by buying online. Given that online distribution should be noticably cheaper, this would allow the labels to still make their money. While they are at it, they should also have other formats directly downloadable for those that don't care about the longevity of their music.
Last time I asked Johova Witness' at my door whether slavery was inherently wrong, one walked away pissed, and the other said "No".
The tone of your post is that I am saying that it still sucks. I specifically said that enough money and manpower has been thrown at it that it is finally getting good, AND that those who haven't used it for a while should reevaluate.
That being said...you make a lot of excuses for why a person cannot write once run anywhere, but the fact is, they cannot. It has gotten better, but Sun promised "Write Once, Run Anywhere". That was the first and primary promise of Java. It failed.
Now that all that money and effort has been spent improving Java, we do have a useful environment. Just not as useful as if the same effort had been put into an emulator that had a better foundation.
As for C-64 emulator trying to run at the same speed as an original C-64. In that you are mostly wrong. Given that the target audience of a C-64 emulator is people looking that real 64 experience, speed limiting is a feature, but most C-64 emulators have speed limiting as an option, not as a requirement.
"Yes, and guess how effecient this makes code execution, if the emulated CPU happens to differ a lot from the host CPU ?"
Uh, my comment was about running code accuratly, not about speed. If speed was the primary goal, then Java has been a failure right up until the last few years. The only reason Java is resonably quick now is JIT. This was being done in the "Toys" long before it was done with Java.
"C-64 emulators are toys. Java is meant for work. Now, one may argue how well it fullfills this role; but the purposes - and therefore design criterias - of the two are completely different. Therefore this comparison is entirely pointless."
That's just silly. Just because two similar products are aiming at different targets does not make a comparison pointless. Java promised emulation accuracy. They failed, while the various "Toy" emulators succeeded. The developers of Java did NOT meet their design criteria. What they did was change the stated criteria to meet the actual code. This is why making the emulator first was bad.
When Sun first introduced Java, their stated goal was to overthrow MS/Intel. Their plan was to distribut an emulator for free. When they got enough software written to run on the emulator, they could introduce the physical machines and instantly have a majority of the software market working on their hardware.
The reason this failed was three fold. 1) The emulation accuracy was not what it was promised. 2) The emulator was too slow for most applications. 3) By the time Sun was ready to start making chips, Intel's offerings were so much faster that they could emulate faster than the Java chips ran on silicon.
Bonus points to anyone that can remember what the name of Suns Java chip was.
Hint: They named something else exactly the same thing. (presumably to bury references to the chip in search engines)
It is just a really crappy emulator. The reason that you don't see multitasking in the JVM is the same reason you didn't see it in DOS. Everyone is compiling their code to run in machine language (Yes, Byte code.) The JVM is following in the footsteps of the "IBM PC". An increadably crappy design that after years of manpower, and millions of dollars is finally getting to a point where it is good. (If you haven't looked at it in a while, it's time to reevaluate)
There is no reason that an OS couldn't be written for Java, and that OS could support multi-tasking. One thing to keep in mind is that the target audience for java, and the limitations of Java don't lead to the kind of enviroment that would encourage a company to write a full OS to run on it. Besides, since the platforms that have JVMs on them can load multiple instances of the JVM, what little incentive is left disappears.
Shortly after Java was introduced, I would always laugh about the whole write once run anywhere claim. Java was a crappy emulator that was inconsistant across platforms. One program would have three different outcomes on three different platforms. At the same time you could get something like a C64 emulator that would run on 20 different platforms, and get exactly the same results every time.
I believe the biggest hurdle to Java compatibility was that they wrote the emulator first, and then tried to make the processors after. This meant that when one implementation behaved differently than the other, you could not point to the physical reference platform and say, "look, this is how it runs or real hardware." Not suprisingly the Java processors never took off
Many do understand that the original post was a joke. Unfortunaly, many of us have met many developers that are completely serios about writing unmaintainable code on purpose. While many of the posts here are obviously jokes, some are not. It is an unfortunate reality that our industry is loaded with almost as many unethical people as car dealerships. For example, I cannot count the number of times I have been in a meeting where it is openly stated that we should "never leave money on the table".
I always try to write code with a bus in mind. No, not a data bus, but a big steel diesel passanger carrying bus. The question is what happens if I get hit by a bus tomorrow. The company that I am currently contracting to, started at needing ~12 a month of work. After a few applications that even their least talented coders could make modification to, I am now at a steady 40 to 50 hours of work a week.
Another benefit of coding to for a bus is that after a couple of successes, the people you work for will soon start to just take your word for it when you tell them that you should spend more time on a piece of code because it needs to be done right.
I was the 4th or 5th contractor they had for this job, and each of the others lasted long enough for one to two applications before things started to fall apart. I am 6 years into this contract, and on application 17 or 18.
Integrity has been very profitable for me.
AMD is not the "Good Guys". They are the underdog. There is a big difference. The reason you should want AMD to succeed is not to have an AMD monopoly, but because when you have two titans battling it out in the corporate arena, neither can afford to stomp on their own peasants.
So, the official stance of the RIAA is that they have the right to infect peoples computers with rootkits.
This has been the claim of every manufacturer since the Nintendo. I'm not buying it. We all know that it is common practice for companies to do 'creative accounting'. We know that there are plenty of ways to make it look like money is being lost when it is not in reality. What do you think would happen if MS admitted to making a 10% profit on their hardware? That's right, they would have hundreds of thousands of people screaming that they should lower the price, or stop charging for a "license" to make software for the unit. The very poor excuse for charging this "license" fee has been that that is how they make their money back from the loss on hardware. They loose even that excuse if they admit to making a profit on hardware.
It is extreamly common for people in authority to use other who have no say to deliver their messages. This is often done with the express purpose of pushing unreasonable requests on people, and creating exactly your feelings on anyone who complains. This is not just in government, but in jobs, and even in families.
How many people have had a review, that included a "wage review", at work where they are told that someone not involved in the meeting, and unaccessable to the employee, is the final decicion on their raise. This was the same thing.
So basically you are wrong. In most situations, being a jerk to the innocent guys just trying to do their job is the only way to get things changed. If your job is Henchman, expect to be treated like it.
Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to have fallen for the misconception that SSI (Social Security INSURANCE) is SSR (Social Security RETIREMENT). This is why the system is failing. SSI was never intended to be a retirement plan. When they created it, they expected most people to die before recieving it, and the few that did recieve it would be on their death beds. They chose an age for simplicity, as picking a level of health would be very hard as to how old is too old work.
Now, I understand that we have a couple of generations that have been lead to believe that SSI is SSR, and it would be unfair to someone that has budgeted to retire next year, to suddenly tell them that they have another 10 years to go. But telling someone who is (like me) 35 that they won't recieve SSI until they are 75 instead of 65 really would be ok.
The solution would be to have a schedule where every 3 or 4 years, the age of SSI payout goes up by 1 year. This could go on until SSI becomes solvent.
This would allow SSI to be restored to its original purpose without completely screwing the population that has been allowed to misunderstand it's purpose.
When I meet a single person over the age of 20 that has gone a decade without commiting copyright violation, I'll let you know.
But since our eyes were made by an "Intelligent Designer", doesn't that mean that we have been designed to go blind? Looking directly at the sun is the Intelligent thing to do!
If AOL is serious about this, it could kill 99% of "piracy" and remove the need for DRM at the same time. While there is a certain small percentage that will copy these shows just for the entertainment value of collecting them in one place, the vast majority of people would not bother.
You have to look at why people copy video. (please add more if I missed any) 1) Cost This is not an issue if the shows are advertisement sponsered. 2) Commercial free At one to two minutes per show, few people will be willing to take the time edit out the commercials, or to chase down the moving target of p2p/pirate sites to get a show without 1 to 2 minutes of commercials. If the consumer doesn't need to fiddle with the video to strip DRM, they are less likely to spend the time to cut commercials. 3) Quality If the quality is as good as standard TV, few will seek out the alternative sources. 4) Convinence If they keep all the shows available all the time without DRM or the need for a special client, people won't need to keep local copies to know that they will be able to pick the show they want to watch with just a remote. 5) Portability If people know they can always go back to the well for another copy, and the shows have no DRM, they won't feel the need to stockpile shows to have future access. They will fill their portable device, and delete when done to make room for new shows. 6) Hording is fun Some people download tons of music and videos, just to horde. These people often are not even listening/watching this content. Sometimes they download more content that they could watch/listen to in their lifetimes. These people aren't actually a concern because the data is not music/video until it is decoded. 7) Alternate OS/TV Top Device This can really only be solved by not implenting DRM or a specialize client. 8) Privacey If the data collected is limited to volentary data and date/time/file data without personally identifiable data, few will complain. No doubt this is a step in the right direction. If the stay away from artificial scarcity, and DRM, they will have removed almost all reasons for piracy.
Hey the odds of getting pregnent might seem impossible, but they would have said the same thing about his AIDS clearing up too.... So, now that he has been cured of AIDS, and as soon as he solves the same gender pregnancy issue, what will be next on his list???
And this is why removing laser printer secret codes, and having anonymous internet access is important.
The ID camp has shown that it is clearly NOT God + Evolution. They have shown this by trying to push as much doubt about evolution as possible.
Too bad this doesn't seem to apply to photographers. Somehow they can charge you work of taking the photograph, then charge you for the right to copy the image, then charge you for the film used to take the picture, and finally they charge you the negatives which are physically the same item as the film they already charged you for. "work for hire" doesn't seem to always automatically apply.
By, saying that all audio CDs should not be played, you took the heat off of Sony. You basically told them that audio CDs are inherently a problem. This would lead to the belief that the problem is not Sony's. You also punished the employee. If companies follow your advice, employees that want a little music through the day will now be denied the use of any CDs. You should make sure that you highlight that SONY is the problem, and that they have software on their CDs that infect computers with DRM.